CardioExchange Archive

April 9th, 2015

Selections from Richard Lehman’s Literature Review: April 9th

Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP

This week’s topics include the PROMISE trial, the efficacy of folic acid therapy in primary prevention of stroke among patients with hypertension in China, and more.

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August 19th, 2013

Look Before Leaping to Conclusions About Bush’s Stent

Ajay J Kirtane, MD, SM

Ajay Kirtane shares his thoughts on the publicity surrounding Bush’s stent and what it means for the public perception of PCI.

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April 13th, 2012

CT Angiography for Safe Discharge of Patients

(Reprinted with permission from NOW@NEJM, a blog for physicians about the New England Journal of Medicine) Chest pain is the second most common reason for Emergency Room visits in this country, and although only 10-15% of patients admitted with chest pain are ultimately diagnosed with an acute coronary syndrome, the majority of patients get admitted. So […]

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March 26th, 2012

CT Angiography to Rule Out CAD in Chest-Pain Patients

Larry Husten, PHD

Each year, 6 million people in the U.S. arrive at the emergency department (ED) with acute chest pain. Although only 10% to 15% of them turn out to have an acute coronary syndrome (ACS), most are admitted to the hospital. Coronary CT angiography (CCTA) has been proposed as a good method to quickly establish the presence […]

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January 19th, 2012

CT Angiography Found Less Helpful in Patients With High Calcium Scores

Larry Husten, PHD

Computed tomography angiography (CTA) has been proposed as a less invasive method to exclude obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD), but no consensus has been achieved about its clinical role in different patient subsets. Now a new report published in JACC from the CORE-64 (Coronary Artery Evaluation Using 64-Row Multidetector Computed Tomography Angiography) study shows that CTA may not be […]

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December 13th, 2010

False-Positive CT Angiogram Leads to Heart Transplant

Larry Husten, PHD

A 52-year old woman with atypical chest pain ended up with a heart transplant after a CT angiogram to “reassure” her sparked a devastating sequence of events. Following a false-positive CT angiogram, the patient underwent coronary angiography and suffered a dissection of the left main coronary artery, followed by emergency CABG, subsequent graft failure, and […]

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